


You Asked If I Were Happy

by local_doom_void



Series: Methods of Humanity [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Existential Crisis, Gen, Post-Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Professor Tom Riddle, Professor Voldemort really but the tags..., Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Voldemort Gets the Stone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-25 01:55:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22008067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/local_doom_void/pseuds/local_doom_void
Summary: Tom Riddle was never taught to live – he had to learn from scratch.
Relationships: Nagini & Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: Methods of Humanity [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1855237
Comments: 40
Kudos: 704
Collections: Flashing into the New Year





	You Asked If I Were Happy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [limeta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeta/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [limeta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeta/pseuds/limeta) in the [flashing_into_the_new_year](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/flashing_into_the_new_year) collection. 



> I've honestly deviated a fair bit from the details of this prompt. But I believe that, in spirit, I've fulfilled it.
> 
> **Prompt:**
> 
> Tom Riddle just realising that he's chosen an unimaginably incompetent side to fight a war with and wonders if he can get away with fleeing the war (1st, 2nd, dealer's choice)

Lord Voldemort returns to the land of living in February of 1992, and finds it wanting.

He is tired. He is _old_. He has – not been alive – but existed as one, continuous consciousness for sixty six years and almost two months. He remembers being twenty, even twenty five, and being unable to contemplate such ages. He had thought he had finished growing, then – had thought he would remain, twenty something and optimistic and full of vivid energy, forevermore. Yet here he stands, in his safe house, in his nightclothes, staring at his new body and his bright red eyes, his hair unstyled but kempt, and he feels no urge to rule the world.

He just wants to sit in his library, with his books. He wants to curl up under a warm blanket, on a comfortable armchair, in front of a fire, with Nagini on top of him and a book in his hands. He wants to get drunk without having to worry about waking up at midnight later that night for a raid. He wants never to have to speak to another human ever again.

So he does.

Cue the resulting existential crisis.

Who is he, if not a Dark Lord? If not Lord Voldemort, political dissident, guerrilla terrorist, magical Britain’s most wanted and most feared man who is barely a man, unfeeling monster, _devil spawn_ … Who is he, if not all of these things, societally labeled ‘crimes’ which have defined him for all of his life and from which he has never been able to envision his escape?

He does not know how to exist without acting out his monstrosities. But he is stubborn, and instead of giving up and going back to speak and walk and talk as Lord Voldemort, Dark Lord, he walks around his library, dusting off his books, mending the spines of the ones who have suffered from the years in which he was incorporeal, and thinks. Speaks aloud, more like, in Parseltongue, and bothers Nagini incessently with his self-exploration.

“ _Just do what you want_,” she keeps telling him.

Eventually he wonders if maybe she’s got the root of the issue there.

  


By March, he knows that he never truly got rid of Tom Riddle. Rather, he _is_ Tom Riddle – but Lord Voldemort as well, and the distinction between the twain is muddled in his mind. He doesn’t like imagining that he is Tom Riddle, whose life was characterised by constant low-grade anxiety, but he has also never ceased to feel that constant low-grade anxiety. He has told himself he did – but Lord Voldemort was lying to himself.

He’s very good at lying, and he almost believed himself. That is another thing he knows – Lord Tom Voldemort Riddle is quite a good liar. He does not feel guilt when he lies. He knows he is supposed to feel guilt, but he’s not sure of the shape of guilt – doesn’t know how to find it within himself, if indeed he feels it. The implication that he ought to _know_ has never been helpful to him, for guilt or any other emotion. How is he to know if he feels anything at all? He can assess the motions of his body – how fast his heart is beating, how quickly his lungs are breathing, whether his chest is warm or cold or tight, or the cold-blooded rush of panic-fear. But he does not quite know the names of these emotions, if indeed they are emotions.

He knows that he likes books. He likes to read. He likes Nagini. He likes warm, soft blankets. He likes long, luxurious bubble baths and the soft, muted smell of sandalwood.

He doesn’t like shoes or socks. He doesn’t like being cold. He doesn’t like being surprised and snuck up upon. He doesn’t like small talk and he doesn’t really like other humans, either, because they are irritating, or vapid, or they try to touch him (he doesn’t like being touched), or they want to use him for something.

He is aware he is attractive. He knows he is of a body and face that is considered “sexually appealing”. He hates how this means other humans try to make him want them in turn, when he has never wanted thusly, and he hates how this means that other humans see him and are blinded by his appearance so that they cannot see how much of a monster he is.

He is not certain, actually, that he is a monster. Many fear him so. He has murdered without guilt, knows he would murder without guilt again. He tortures and would torture again, because it was their own fault. He _warned_ them. It is not his fault that they did not believe him. But humans aren’t supposed to murder and torture without guilt – they’re not supposed to do it at all.

He did. It always came so easily to him.

Would it bother him, if he were a monster? Voldemort taps the spine of his current book against his lips, and, pensive, wonders.

“ _What is a monster, Nagini?_ ” he asks.

“ _Something scary_ ,” she replies without hesitation. “ _Something scary and alive._ ”

“ _Then I suppose I am a monster_ ,” Voldemort hisses slowly.

“ _That’s ridiculous. You’re not scary at all._ ”

Oh, Voldemort breathes wordlessly. Of course. That is the answer.

Monsterhood is _subjective_.

  


By April, Voldemort is bored. He walks into the local town with Nagini sized down and wrapped about his neck in the manner of a scarf, glamoured to seem like mere fabric even as her head darts too and fro and her tongue flickers to take it all in. Humans, muggles for the most part, speak to him. He finds himself distant from them. He does not understand the things they speak about. It is as if they come to him from beyond a long, echoing tunnel, distorted into nonsense on the way. Who cares if the Prime Minister was caught in a brothel with a whore? He is a human, a foolish, stupid, idiotic human, doing idiotic human things just like they all do stupid, idiotic human things.

And besides, Voldemort feels certain that the whore sees it quite differently.

“ _I don’t understand them, Nagini_ ,” he hisses dully as he sits in a park and sends wandless tripping hexes at any children who make the attempt to torment the ducklings he has been feeding for the past week.

“ _Do you need to?_ ”

… _Does_ he need to?

  


By May, Voldemort misses feeling like a wizard, and so he walks in Diagon Alley.

How quaint.

He picks up a Daily Prophet for a few knuts. He visits Gringotts and is relatively pleased to find that the vaults in Lord Voldemort’s name have not, in fact, been gutted by the Ministry. He does appreciate goblins so. They’re sensible. They’re reasonable and principled and obstructionist in a way that Voldemort finds almost admirable.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Lord Voldemort,” his account manager tells him once they are alone and private. It’s the only pleasantry Voldemort has ever heard a goblin speak before, and he blinks at the little creature.

“Spare me,” he finally says. “I want to change some of my investments.”

He reads his newspaper in the lobby while he waits for all the paperwork to go through, and it is there, in the classifieds, that he sees it.

A want ad for the position of DADA professor at Hogwarts.

A long lost _want_ stirs in Voldemort’s chest.

  


Thomas Moregrave is a displaced British native who grew up in France for most of his life, due to the whole Voldemort situation. He did not attend Beauxbatons due to his rather nationalistic parents, who resented being forced to move to France. He took correspondence courses instead, gaining an O in Defense (and some other subjects, but crucially, not all of them). He has a Mastery in Defensive Theory and Dueling, albeit only recently acquired, and with no real practical experience to show for it. He has always wanted to see Hogwarts, even if it’s far too late to attend as a student. He speaks fluent French and has a slight accent.

Voldemort supposes he ought to thank Abraxas for forcing him to learn, all those years ago.

He changes certain facts about himself. A transformation stone scavenged from the depths of his vault and tied into an armband worn on his upper left arm bestows him with less hallowed cheeks and less dramatic cheekbones, with browner hair and skin of a warmer tone than Voldemort’s usual deathly pale shade. His new eyes are brown, as well, a bright and almost amber brown – his new nose not as sharp and thin. The bags beneath his eyes vanish.

He doesn’t know exactly why he is spending such effort on this madness, but when he questions himself, starts telling himself to stop, he reminds himself of what Nagini said to him, when first he sat up in bed and screamed because he felt he did not know himself.

_Just do what makes you happy. Then nothing else will matter._

  


It is incredible when Dumbledore suspects nothing.

“I must say,” he tells Voldemort, after offering him the position, “I am really terribly glad you chose this year to return to Britain, Mr. Moregrave. The only other applicant was one Gilderoy Lockhart.”

Who?

“How terrible,” Voldemort – Thomas – murmurs, as he looks with glee upon the one-year teaching contract. He had wanted this, he remembers with a sudden rush of youth. Tom Riddle had wanted this more than he had ever wanted Lord Voldemort.

He signs, and a decades ancient weight lifts from his being.

  


Objectively, Voldemort is aware that he looks young. He doesn’t feel young. He isn’t young – he is sixty six years old, for goodness’ sake.

But he looks young. He is pretending to be young.

Albus Dumbledore is giving Lord Voldemort a tour of Hogwarts. Voldemort finds it the easiest task in the world to pretend at the awe and wonder of one who has never before seen the castle. With great difficulty he forces away the instinct to push all his expressions behind an aloof and distant mask, and tries on what will happen when he expresses himself openly. His grin feels strange across his face, when he is in a public area where anyone may see. He feels as though he is about to be chastised – by who he does not know. As if he is about to be accused of something terrible and monstrous, because what reason does a monster have for smiling but monstrous ones?

Instead, Albus Dumbledore appears to enjoy his awe and his smiles. When Lord Voldemort allows himself to say with great conviction that _I love this building_ , Albus Dumbledore smiles kindly, his eyes twinkle madly, and he agrees.

Voldemort wants to murder him then, while he is so open and so vulnerable, but he holds back. He wants this position more.

“These will be your colleagues in the coming year,” Dumbledore says, and begins to introduce faces to him from around a table. Voldemort nods and smiles (politely, not genuinely), and greets them neutrally, as if he has never before met them in his life. Thomas Moregrave, after all, has not met them.

They are skeptical of him. Voldemort accepts this in a way he is not sure he would have, had he been Tom Riddle at this moment. Tom Riddle is a known quantity to half these people. Tom Riddle got twelve Os on his NEWTs.

Thomas Moregrave received only three.

So he sits through a meeting, about ward updates and class rosters and syllabus deadlines and detention guidance and the bringing up and shooting down of a concrete book of house point values, and for only the second time in his entire life, he feels pleasantly happy with how everything is going.

  


“ _We’re moving_ ,” he tells Nagini when the summer break has no more than two weeks left in it.

“ _Boo. Terrible_ ,” she hisses.

Voldemort picks her up and carries her into the bedroom where he is packing, embraces her and drapes her on his shoulders. “ _But this will make me happy_ ,” he says.

“ _... Fine. I suppose we can move._ ”

  


He’s always wanted to decorate the Defense classroom. He had plans for it, when he was seventeen and young and foolish and not quite yet Lord Voldemort. These plans return to him as he looks at the empty room, simply waiting for his personal touch, and he smiles until he feels as if he will float away.

  


“Hello, class,” Voldemort says, leaning against his desk and twirling his secondary wand, an ebony and opal creation from a defunct French wandmaker, between his hands. His eyes, unbidden, sweep across Harry Potter, but then again – “My name is Thomas Moregrave,” he continues, smiling gently at the cowed second years who are unsure what to do with him. “To be honest, I have always wanted to be a teacher.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _The Chamber of Secrets has been opened,_ the wall read in blood – or at least in red paint. _Enemies of the heir, beware._
> 
> Oh, for fuck's sake, Voldemort thought.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Homeland](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25738402) by [Atlanta_Black](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanta_Black/pseuds/Atlanta_Black)




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